Countdown To Midnight
by Cazrolime
Summary: Sylar finally gives in to the desire for infamy and shows off his acquired powers to Chandra, hoping that the geneticist will come round to his way of thinking. It doesn’t go as planned.


**Title:** Countdown to Midnight  
**Rating:** PG  
**Disclaimer:** Heroes belongs to NBC and Tim Kring.  
**Characters:** Sylar, Chandra Suresh  
**Word Count:** 2138  
**Spoilers:** Six Months Ago.  
**Warnings:** Shameless murder of evolutionary theory, and reassembly into the Frankenstein's monster you see discussed here.  
**Summary:** Sylar finally gives in to the desire for infamy and shows off his acquired powers to Chandra, hoping that the geneticist will come round to his way of thinking. It doesn't go as planned.

* * *

_SCALPER STEALS AGAIN_

_The body of a Manhattan postal worker has been discovered in a New York sewer, gruesomely stripped of its brain and the top of its skull._

_Workmen, whilst repairing a stretch of sewer, made the harrowing discovery last night. The mutilated body is thought to be the latest on the growing list of victims claimed by an unknown serial killer, nicknamed the Scalper for his deranged method of killing._

_Dental records have identified the victim as a Mr Brian Davis of Manhattan, New York, who was reported missing by his brother several weeks ago. Experts estimate that the body has been lying in its watery coffin for more than a month._

_And yet his grieving family is still unable to give his earthly remains a proper burial… or, at least, not all of them. The missing brain, like that of each of the Scalper's victims, is yet to be found._

The article started plodding at that point, given over to the ramblings of a hysterical relative, and then to one of the workers who had found the body in the first place, as well as a kind of afterthought noting that the police still had no leads. But of _course_ they didn't. Why should he be so sloppy as to leave them those?

Sylar turned the page with a bored little twist of his fingers, but the article followed him onto pages four and five, as well as a surely superfluous double-spread a little further on. Admittedly, though, he couldn't bring himself to be annoyed with the size of the story: after all, they were devoting all this space to him. Fame had come with gratifying swiftness, once the bodies had started being found.

The nickname, though, he was less pleased with. It sounded ridiculous -- probably the first thing that sprang to the mind of a reporter with a deadline -- and every time Sylar saw it printed, he wanted to storm the relevant paper's offices, tell them his name and make them use it. Or, hell, even give it to the police and see if that was lead enough for them.

He'd have to hide this from Chandra. Though the man had illuminated so many things, he didn't understand them like Sylar did.

In the end, though, he needn't have worried. Chandra -- genius, deluded, wilfully blind Chandra -- did not work it out on his own.

Sylar practically knew _Activating Evolution_ by heart by this point, but he had it open anyway, and was absorbed in an exploration of small-scale evolution when Chandra wandered into the apartment. The motion was irritating: it meandered, not nearly as driven as it ought to be. All the same, Sylar nodded in greeting as Chandra looked at him in surprise.

"Gabriel? I wasn't expecting you here."

Sylar pursed his lips, and Chandra waved a hand impatiently as he moved towards the kettle. The geneticist gave the impression sometimes that he was in two minds at best about his friend's change of name. "My apologies. _Sylar_. It's been a long day." He froze, with his hand on the countertop, and looked back over his shoulder. "You don't have a key. How did you…?"

Sylar shrugged, going back to the book. "I let myself in."

Chandra glanced from Sylar to the door and back again, looking impressed and faintly alarmed. "You can open locks now?"

"They're just mechanisms." All the same, he allowed himself a small, proud smile.

"Ah?" Chandra was wearing a now-familiar expression: the slightly bemused look he adopted whenever he wasn't sure about something Sylar said or did. His eyes wandered to the pot. "…Would you like some tea?"

"Always."

"Are you still reading that?" Chandra asked conversationally, gesturing towards _Activating Evolution_ as he fished around for teabags. "You should be reciting it in your sleep by now." There were many things he failed to notice, but Sylar's passion for his book was not one of them. Perhaps he felt flattered.

"Mm," said Sylar, looking up at him. "I'm quite enamoured of this chapter, actually. Where you argue that a species can evolve on a personal as well as a global level -- an organism changing and… _improving_ within its own lifetime."

"The theory of small-scale evolution, yes. Primitive man coming together and forming language and community. Captive octopi developing their brains to gain an advantage over wild ones. That sort of thing."

"It needs a different name," said Sylar. "_Small scale_ doesn't sound nearly as important as it should."

"That's what it _is_, though," Chandra insisted, making Sylar frown in irritation. "Evolution on a personal level, rather than that of an entire species. That doesn't make it any less important," he added quickly, catching Sylar's expression.

"And obviously, some individuals are going to lose out, just like some species are wiped out by more successful ones," Sylar pressed -- not sure that he'd carry this train of thought all the way, not out loud, but needing to know that the man agreed.

There had been a reason why he'd come to Chandra's apartment. And the chapter he'd found himself rereading hadn't been a coincidence.

"That's true," Chandra said slowly, as he filled two mugs with boiling water.

"And you see nothing wrong with that."

Chandra paused, then looked around at him, frowning slightly as he put the kettle back down. For a few pensive seconds, Sylar wondered if he'd been too bald with his question, but then the geneticist turned back to his tea things with only an evasive shrug and a last glance over his shoulder.

"Well," he replied carefully, "it would be unfortunate for the weaker individuals. But survival of the fittest is such an integral part of nature that I don't think one man's opinion is really relevant. Who am I to argue with evolution?"

"Exactly," said Sylar quietly. "_Exactly_."

And the fittest, those chosen few, were never meant to hide themselves away. The strong would inherit the earth.

He stood up.

"I'm going to show you something."

"How…?"

Chandra had his hands on both of Sylar's arms, very slightly unsteady, staring up into his face. On any other day Sylar would find the invasion of personal space irritating in the extreme, but right now he was buzzing. He was exuberant. It was the first time he had shown anyone his newer powers, and the rush of it span his head, the way Christ must have felt when he calmed the storm. His eyes burned with excitement, and his smile was broad and intense and cold.

Chandra's smile, by contrast, was shaky, more of an uncertain grimace.

"That's -- those are amazing…"

"I know."

"But how can you do all that? You can't have more than one ability -- it goes against all my research, all my findings, the very properties of the gene…"

A stab of annoyance tightened Sylar's face, and now he _was_ irritated by the other man's unasked-for proximity, brushing him off with a twist of his fingers. "Then I'm the exception. You saw what I can do, with your own eyes."

A few months ago he would have leaned forward, wide-eyed, tried to be earnest, tried to be a good student. But he was a different person now, and he knew he was right. The student had surpassed the teacher.

Chandra was breathing heavily, and seemed to be struggling with himself. He looked away, then back, then away again, whilst Sylar wondered impatiently why he wasn't far more pleased about this. He wanted to study powers, and here was Sylar with a whole catalogue of them, a man like whom there was no other.

At last, the man spoke, dragging out the sound like this was something he really didn't want to say.

"…Sylar…"

Sylar lifted his chin, raised one eyebrow, but didn't speak.

"Some of your abilities…" Chandra swallowed, then started again. "In some cases, I was able to, to ascertain from external data what abilities a person might have manifested. And, ah."

He was standing very still now, and his face was tight, as if a single twitch might cause him to lose his nerve and bolt. Sylar met this with a deliberately passive expression. This was a hurdle he'd foreseen them having to clear, should he go through with it and show Chandra what he could do, and he was ready to fight his corner.

"They're dead. And suddenly you can do what they could."

His face said: tell me a lie. Tell me you didn't kill them. Spin me a story I can believe, so that I don't have to know that I led you right to them, that I was implicit. Tell me that the man standing inches away is not a killer.

Sylar tilted his head, the smile flickering back to ghost on his lips.

"That's evolution," he said. "On a personal level."

Chandra's mouth sagged, like he might be sick.

Seconds ticked by.

"Get out," he whispered.

"Chandra," Sylar said urgently, stepping forwards, "don't make that mistake again. Don't you see? This is what's meant to happen. You study human evolution, and I have the capacity to evolve beyond what anyone's ever--"

"You killed people," Chandra said more loudly, more shrilly, stumbling backwards. "Everyone we went to find, everyone who trusted us -- you killed them! Were you going to kill me too?"

"Chandra, why should I kill you?"

"Why should you kill all those people?"

Sylar stared at him, aghast. He'd thought that the man had begun to understand, at last -- but instead he was going directly into the worst possible reaction. "I have to -- it's an evolutionary imperative, I--"

"Don't you dare quote my book at me like it justifies what you've done," snapped Chandra.

"That's exactly what it does." _Activating Evolution_ soared into Sylar's palm, and he didn't even have to hunt for a page: the chapter he'd left it open on said it all, really, and his eyes (by now accustomed to the text) quickly found a succinct passage. "_A species as a whole could not survive if each member of it did not have the ability and drive to become somehow better than its fellows, but it will thrive when individuals within it adapt, develop, improve themselves._"

"That does not condone murder."

"Then how about this?" He rifled hurriedly through the pages, searching. "Natural selection. Survival of the fittest. Ah— _it is often seen in nature that a few individuals will prosper at the expense of those with more outdated genetic codes_…"

"I…"

But after the initial interruption, Chandra seemed unable to speak further; his voice trailed away into a silence that claimed the room before he could finally finish his sentence.

"…I never thought of it like that."

Sylar smirked. "But now you do."

Chandra held out a hand for the book. "May I…?"

"You're going to re-read it?" Sylar handed it over readily, glad that at last he had shown the geneticist just how right he had been all along. Maybe now there wouldn't be the need for so much secrecy. Maybe now they could truly be incredible.

But Chandra shook his head.

"I'm going to burn it."

_What!_

"_No._" But the geneticist – idiot – blind – damn fool – bastard of a geneticist was already halfway to the door, moving quickly, running away from everything he and Sylar had worked and hoped for over the past five months. The idiot. The blind damn _fool_.

Sylar raised a finger, and Chandra froze. Petrified.

With a gesture, Sylar pinwheeled him in the air so that they faced each other, and saw the look of terror on his amiable face.

He stepped closer.

"_Don't give up on me._"

The gob of spit caught him on the shoulder and stank there; with a noise of rage, Sylar hurled Chandra backwards through his own apartment door, not bothering to open it first. From the noises beyond the wreckage, the geneticist was still alive, which in Sylar's not-so-humble opinion was more than he deserved right now.

_Crash_, went a rather large percentage of the furniture in the sparse apartment. _Crash_, went many of the precise and delicate instruments of science that had before adorned the long wooden desk but now decorated the floor in glittering shards. _Crash_ went the future. How would they find the evolved humans now? How would Sylar improve himself? Chandra might have been bringing up a roadblock against the most amazing progression of a species since fish crawled out of the ocean to cough themselves lungs and legs. Who would show Sylar how much he was worth? Who would tell him he was magnificent?

The idiot. The _idiot_.

Honestly unsure of whether he wanted to catch him or kill him, Sylar stalked out into the fractured corridor.

But Chandra had gone.


End file.
